I was ready for college the moment I hit senior year. I was excited for the new atmosphere and challenges that awaited me, but not necessarily the work. I had heard from friends and family that most of my time spent outside of the classroom would be spent studying, mainly because classes only accounted for a small percentage of my day. I couldn't believe this to be true, due to the fact that I had always had class going on for 6 hours a day, every day. Coming here to URI, I have found the challenges I expected, but my interest in them was extremely surprising to me. I have always been a deep learner in english. I have a love for storytelling and have always been an avid reader. Math and sciences were my weak points, and I was happy that in college we can pick the classes we wanted to take.
The only class I was really not excited to take this semester was Nutrition 210. I did not care or want to know how many calories I needed in a day, or what vitamins are most important. This simply does not interest me. I would much rather take a class in psychology or literature, reading classic novels or learning how we think. Because this class was my least favorite, I knew that I would have to invest more time into studying for it. Memorizing seemed to be the best way to go, especially because there were so many processes and vocabulary words that needed to be learned throughout the semester. On the first test, I received a surprisingly good grade. After this, I began to look at notes and quiz myself on nutrition almost every day. Over time, terms and definitions became second nature, and I was able to delve further into the meaning and cause of each process I learned. I don't believe that everyone can be a deep learner in all aspects of their education. There is simply not enough time in the day. I believe we have to choose what we find important or interesting and go with it. Because each person has a different "favorite part" of education, I can learn from someone who has a true passion in their subject, and know that I was taught well.
I was extremely excited for this class, mainly because I was thinking about becoming an English teacher one day. After taking this class, I realize that I would rather help students psychologically rather than in the actual classroom. There are so many rifts in education today, including poverty and racism and "real world issues." I would rather become a psychologist in order to help children overcome their problems and feel confident in themselves. I'm still happy I took this class, mainly because I needed to learn that there are disadvantages for students in certain situations. Every child is different, and they come from different walks of life. It's our job as students now to fix what has been damaged by educators or politicians before us, in order to educate the future population. Students need to know early on that every type of intelligence is valid, and that just because you're not great at one thing, doesn't mean you can't be great at something else.
There were multiple resources that I felt were helpful in this class, especially when group projects or research came around. I found Evernote difficult at first, but I was extremely thankful for the clipper app that came along with it. I was able to snapshot and capture certain aspects or parts of an article that I needed instead of copying the whole thing, or just saving the web page. I could file and store these on Evernote using notebooks and tags such as race, edu. reform, deep learning etc. On the other hand, I did not find Zotero as helpful as others. First, the program would not download on my laptop. When I tried using it on a classmates, I couldn't really understand the benefits of it compared to other citing sites. I found that creating flashcards and quizzing myself was the most helpful way to study this first semester. Instead of just reading my notes and highlighting, I would ask a friend to quiz me. When definitions were memorized, I would try to further my understanding of it by relating it to other things, making connections and finding correlations between multiple topics. I found this helpful especially while studying for my nutrition final, as well as this one.
The only class I was really not excited to take this semester was Nutrition 210. I did not care or want to know how many calories I needed in a day, or what vitamins are most important. This simply does not interest me. I would much rather take a class in psychology or literature, reading classic novels or learning how we think. Because this class was my least favorite, I knew that I would have to invest more time into studying for it. Memorizing seemed to be the best way to go, especially because there were so many processes and vocabulary words that needed to be learned throughout the semester. On the first test, I received a surprisingly good grade. After this, I began to look at notes and quiz myself on nutrition almost every day. Over time, terms and definitions became second nature, and I was able to delve further into the meaning and cause of each process I learned. I don't believe that everyone can be a deep learner in all aspects of their education. There is simply not enough time in the day. I believe we have to choose what we find important or interesting and go with it. Because each person has a different "favorite part" of education, I can learn from someone who has a true passion in their subject, and know that I was taught well.
I was extremely excited for this class, mainly because I was thinking about becoming an English teacher one day. After taking this class, I realize that I would rather help students psychologically rather than in the actual classroom. There are so many rifts in education today, including poverty and racism and "real world issues." I would rather become a psychologist in order to help children overcome their problems and feel confident in themselves. I'm still happy I took this class, mainly because I needed to learn that there are disadvantages for students in certain situations. Every child is different, and they come from different walks of life. It's our job as students now to fix what has been damaged by educators or politicians before us, in order to educate the future population. Students need to know early on that every type of intelligence is valid, and that just because you're not great at one thing, doesn't mean you can't be great at something else.
There were multiple resources that I felt were helpful in this class, especially when group projects or research came around. I found Evernote difficult at first, but I was extremely thankful for the clipper app that came along with it. I was able to snapshot and capture certain aspects or parts of an article that I needed instead of copying the whole thing, or just saving the web page. I could file and store these on Evernote using notebooks and tags such as race, edu. reform, deep learning etc. On the other hand, I did not find Zotero as helpful as others. First, the program would not download on my laptop. When I tried using it on a classmates, I couldn't really understand the benefits of it compared to other citing sites. I found that creating flashcards and quizzing myself was the most helpful way to study this first semester. Instead of just reading my notes and highlighting, I would ask a friend to quiz me. When definitions were memorized, I would try to further my understanding of it by relating it to other things, making connections and finding correlations between multiple topics. I found this helpful especially while studying for my nutrition final, as well as this one.